Stray Cat Strut Chapter Fifty-Six - Le Bad Suck

Chapter Fifty-Six - Le Bad Suck

"I see you, I feel you. You thought I was dead? You wish I was. But you forgot that I'm It. I will fuck you up in ways that no one's ever fucked soone up before. They will invent words to describe what I'm going to do.

I will turn your corporation into statistics.

I am a broken mirror and my shards are in your throat. I'm going to tear your reflection out of your spine... bitch."

--Mad Vlad to Calliope Corp CEO before their bankruptcy, 2045

***

"Alright," I muttered just low enough not to wake Tankette up. "Myalis, what have you got for ? Keep them under... call it one thousand points a shell? We need to fire a fuckload of these."

Certainly. Are we still going for variety first?

I considered it, then realized that I had two others to do the thinking for . "Hedge, do we go for variety or just lots of what we think might work?"

He frowned, then nodded slowly. "Variety. But please don't grab anything wasteful. We only have a few dozen more shots to make this count. We can try new things--and we're probably better off varying the kinds of damage we deal--but we can't afford to waste effort and shots."

"Got it," I said. "Heard that, Myalis?"

I did. Let's start then! First, might I suggest sothing simple to whet the appetite?

"Go on." Was she trying to sound like a fancy server on purpose? Actually, scratch that, she definitely was.

The first is a Scrambler bomb. This one detonates and creates a field around itself that shifts items around. It's not quite random, but it might as well be. The Scrambler will remain active for a relatively long ti after deploynt and will continuously move atoms away from their current location and to a random one nearby.

"And that does... what to a person?"

It scrambles them, Catherine. That kills people.

"Oh," I said. "How big of an AOE are we talking here?"

"AOE?" Gros Baton asked, but it was aid at Hedgehog. The man started to explain about video ga terms like Area of Effect and how they ended up co-opted by the military.

The area of effect begins at a kilotre across, give or take a few bus-lengths. Then it shortens over ti with the incident of atomic re-materialization increasing exponentially. I must add that this creates a lot of radiation, both as heat and across the radioactive spectrum.

"Fuck it, we won't have to deal with that, the aliens will. Add one of those to the shopping cart," I said. "Next?"

Next... an Electron Suppression bomb would have so interesting effects on the Phobos object. It would give all protons in a large area a negative charge.

"I don't know enough about physics to tell what that would do, but I can imagine it would be bad. Add it!"

Fantastic. A riff on a bomb that you've purchased before as a grenade might be interesting; the Full Stop is a device covered by a nearly unbreakable shell. Once activated, it stops moving.

"Why would a device that can't move be good?" I asked.

You misunderstand. It cannot be moved. It is spatially locked.

I shrugged. "What would happen to Phobos if it runs into a spatially-locked indestructible thing?"

Hedgehog perked up. "You should get that."

"Alright, add it. Anything else?"

Gluon bombs. I'd explain how changing the environnt reacts to the Strong Nuclear Force could be destructive, but by the ti you'd understand it, Phobos will have landed.

"Fine, fine, add your glue bomb too."

"That doesn't sound as destructive," Hedgehog said.

"I know, right?" I said. "Next?"

Short-duration black holes?

"Fuck yeah!" I said. "Nothing says 'fuck off' like chucking a black hole at soone."

"That sounds good, yeah," Gros Baton said. "Give them le bad suck."

Now I was second guessing myself. Did I want to be known as the samurai that gave the big an moon le bad suck? The s would be ruinous. On the other hand, footage of a small black hole opening up on the side of sothing the size of a moon and fucking it right up might do wonders in reminding people not to ss with and mine.

"Okay, add a couple of those to the cart," I said. "Anything else?"

Keiretsu have been spending a lot of ti combatting smaller models encircling the main body of the Phobos object. Perhaps sothing that would assist them?

"More than smashing big bombs into the side of the moon?" I asked.

Sowhat, yes. I'd suggest the Bee Bomb. It's packed with a system that allows its interior to be larger than the volu expected from its exterior dinsions. The insides are filled with small self-powered drones. Several thousand of them. On deploying, these drones exit the bomb and dart out towards enemy targets at high velocities. They're packed full of explosives.

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"Add it," I said with a nod. It might help our Keiretsu buddies, and it just sounded cool besides. "Is that it?"

Of course not. So far we've only toyed with two of the fundantal forces. But if you want a capstone... perhaps a Cryogenic Anti-Thesis Stasis bomb? It'll sap the heat from the area where it lands. The Antithesis generally requires so amount of heat to operate, and the other bombs you'd been using have been creating plenty. This might reverse that to so degree.

I considered it for a mont before my eyes narrowed. "That spells out CATS," I said.

A coincidence, I'm sure.

I shook my head. "Alright, let's get... two of each? That should hold us up until the end of our shift."

Hedgehog, ever the helpful sort, moved to the back and opened up the access door into the shell storage compartnt. There were two left, both loaded into their slots and ready to fire.

New Purchases:

Scrambler Bomb x2

Electron Suppression x2

Full Stop x2

Gluon x2

Black Hole Bomb x2

Bee Bomb x2

Cryogenic Anti-Thesis Stasis x2

Total Cost:13,250 points

Point total reduced to: 32,530

Fourteen shells appeared in the racks, each one slotting into place with a satisfying click-thunk. They were all slightly different, with shiny exteriors covered in burnished steel.

"That's half a day's worth of shells," I said. "If we're lucky, we won't even need this many."

"If we're lucky," Hedgehog said. He glanced at his wrist, where an old-school watch was wrapped around his arm. "The Tesla collider should be firing within the next hour. We'll shoot right after. And then my shift will be over. I'll escort Miss... Tankette to bed."

"How romantic," I said.

"She's not interested that way," he said.

I blinked. Did that an... he was? But Hedgehog had a poker face like a marble statue and didn't give anything away.

"Sleeping this way will give her a crick in the neck. You might be too young to understand, but once you hit thirty you'll know that sleeping crooked is unacceptable."

"I know what you an, yeah. We used to get mil-surplus beds back at the orphanage," I said. "The mattresses were thinner than a slice of burger at and you were lucky if you got one of those without springs. Knew one kid that died because of one of them."

"How did he die to a mattress?" Gros Baton asked.

"Tetanus," I said with a shrug. "Like, half the symptoms of that are shit you get from bad dieting, so it's not like it's easy to tell that he had sothing wrong going on, at least until it was too late."

Hedgehog just stared at for a mont. "That's ssed up."

"Happens. Anyway, are we good here?"

"We should be. Keep us updated on the group chat as things progress. And please make sure not to leave the site without at least one samurai present. Two is better," Hedgehog said. "The dia is sniffing around, as proven by Gros Baton's interaction with them earlier, and that's not to ntion the others liable to want what we have here. Any one of those shells would be worth millions to a corp."

Don't give the dubiously-moral corporation access to WMDs, got it.

I padded over to Tankette's side and touched her shoulder. "Hey, uh, Tankette, ti to wake up?" I hesitated and almost called her ma'am, but that was too formal. 'Sweetie' swung the bar all the way to the other side, and 'dear' was right out because I wasn't born in the 1800s.

She blinked awake, then looked around herself with a start. "Oh my, did I fall asleep? Hedge, I'm so sor--" She cut herself off with a demure little yawn that she hid behind a hand. "Sorry... I guess I'm not fit for staying up all night anymore."

"Been a while?" I asked.

"I'll have you know I used to be able to party from sundown to sunup."

Sohow, trying to imagine Tankette as a party girl felt... inherently wrong. "Uh-huh."

"How do you think I ended up with my first child?"

"I really don't want to know," I said.

She laughed, then stretched her neck to the side. "Oh, I'm going to have a crick all week."

"Best get you to a proper bed, then. Co on, Gros Baton and I will take over while you get your sleep on."

***